"No. I'm sure I don't. I've never seen him before."
"You told me that Kennet was excited about a photograph. This must be it. What did he say about it?"
Her forehead was desperately wrinkled.
"I don't know… I told you I never listened. I've got a sort — sort of idea he said it would prove something about how Mr Luker was a murderer, but — Oh, I don't know!"
"Is that all you can remember?"
"Yes. Everything," she said despairingly. "But doesn't it help you? I mean, it's quite a lot for me to remember, really, and you're so clever, you ought to be able to think of something—"
The Saint might have hit her on the nose. He might have taken her neck in his two hands and wrung it out like a sponge. It stands to the credit of his self-control that he did neither of those things.
Instead he did something so free from deliberate thought that it might have been almost instinctive, and yet which afterwards he was tempted to think must have been inspired. He couldn't conscientiously pride himself on thinking so accurately and so far ahead. But he knew that that photograph must be a vital part of the secret, if not the most vital part; and he knew that the negative mattered far more than the print. Of all things, that was what he must retain until he knew its secret. And retaining it might not be so easy. Even then, as he knew, all the police departments of England were hunting him, as well as the anonymous legions of the ungodly. Accidents could always happen, and at any moment one or the other might catch up with him; and then, whichever it was, the first thing that would follow would be that he would be searched. Luckily a Leica negative was not so hard to hide…
That was how he might have worked it out if he had thought so long. But he didn't. He simply got up and strolled over to the dressing table with the negative held between his fingers. There, standing with his back to the girl, he took out his fountain pen, removed the cap, unscrewed the nib end and carefully drew it out with the rubber ink sac attached. Then he rolled the negative gently with his finger and thumb, slid it down into the barrel of the pen and replaced everything. It was not so good as the strong room of a safe deposit, where he would have liked to put it, but it was the best thing he could improvise at the moment; and the restrained mechanical occupation of his hands helped to liberate his struggling thoughts…
"What are you doing?" the girl asked fretfully.